Next two weeks to shape direction of Blues’ season
BLUES were well beaten at Craven Cottage, hit for six by a rampant Fulham side who at times toyed with the visitors on Tuesday night.
Two goals for Fabio Carvalho and one each for Neeskens Kebano, Tom Cairney and Antonee Robinson, added to Marc Roberts’ early own goal, were enough to render super strikes by Ivan Sunjic and Gary Gardner as little more than consolations.
Here’s what stood out.
n Gulf in class
If Birmingham’s owners require any guidance on what the club’s supporters want from them they need look no further than these opponents. For many it will be too late.
A team crammed with talented players, so many in a squad they couldn’t all get in the match-day 18, playing attractive football in a stadium that is being updated.
Blues have had eight managers in the time Fulham have had four and the considerable investment in the playing squad has been consistent rather than turned on and off like a tap.
The Cottagers might be described as a yo-yo club in terms of their league status but what cannot be disputed is that even though their owners have made mistakes, never have they pulled the funding.
And their supporters are certainly enjoying what they are seeing at present, which might be the most dominant Championship team since Wolves battered the league into submission a few years ago.
n
Ryan game
Ryan Woods made his first start in two months – and it could not have been in more testing circumstances.
The 28-year-old spent most of his time trying to plug the holes in which the Fulham attackers thrived and there were occasions when he did that reasonably well, making a couple of important blocks to deny Kebano goalscoring opportunities and often tracking back into his own box to deny space.
But it’s impossible to hide from the fact that Blues had little answer to Fulham’s movement off the ball and use of it and at times Woods was left chasing shadows.
In truth, he barely had the ball in the first half but he was more influential in the second and, to his credit, ended up with 72 touches, the most of any Blues player and more than Tom Cairney or Harrison Reed. The difference was his Fulham counterparts were on the front foot and had passing options all over the field, Woods was a conductor without much of an orchestra.
Still, he’s back as a live contributor to the Blues midfield and his distribution remains better than any of his teammates.
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Case for the defence
Blues’ backline struggled badly in the first half, with the three centrebacks unable to track the runs of Kebano, Carvalho and Harry Wilson.
If the players in front of them gave anything like too much time, Fulham would play through them. That was illustrated by Cairney’s goal when Wilson took advantage of hesitation to craft an opening from which the captain’s deflected shot went in.
However, Blues looked far more stable in the second period, when they went to a back four, with Teden Mengi and Roberts at the heart of the defence and Jeremie Bela freed from his wingback berth. The Angolan was understandably far more threatening when he was deployed further upfield.
Lee Bowyer has flitted between a three, four and a five in the last couple of months or so – always starting matches with three centre-backs – and inevitably forcing a winger to play out of position.
During the course of that he will have gathered enough evidence to think that a back four might better suit the resource he has at his disposal now. Blues face Barnsley on Saturday, who almost always start with a three, and it will be interesting to see if Bowyer thinks he can cope with the division’s lowest scorers without the security blanket of three central defenders.
n The real business
Bowyer made the point afterwards that these two teams were ‘different animals’.
“Games like tonight are not going to define where we finish in the league,” said the head coach. “Sometimes you have to hold your hands up and say they are better than you – and that’s what they were.”
Well, the next three matches are definitely against the same species – wounded animals battling for their lives. Saturday’s visitors Barnsley are bottom of the table, while Tuesday brings a clash with third-bottom Peterborough, who boast the worst goal difference in the division.
Sunday week takes Blues to secondbottom Derby, who are in a false position. Add to that fact the transfer window shuts the day after and it’s not an exaggeration to say the next fortnight will shape the whole direction of Blues’ season.